A big early morning surprise!

I heard a birder arrive at 6 AM and went to join him when it started to get daylight. As we were birding, I looked over at the bear-proof ground feeder (the hanging one is bear-proof, too) to discover something had seriously tried to unearth it from the ground. It moved the large rocks we had wedged against the feeder so it couldn't be spun by a bear. One of those boulders weighed at least 100 lbs.

Had to have been a bear. I saw no evidence of hogs or javelina, though I think feral hogs could have physically done it. But they would've really torn up the place, especially the water feature, and left poop, and they wouldn't have spun the feeder around on its base. There was no bear poop either, but likely only because it couldn't get to any of the seed since my son has welded the cups onto the feeder.

Here's how the feeder had previously looked.

So I think that was one angry bear. The upshot is, we're going to have to concrete a big base around the feeder. But it is bear-proof! It passed the acid test! Hopefully that bear won't bother trying to dig it up again in the meantime, since it's a waste of precious energy.

A couple of my photos from today. Still no significant influx of migrants.

Migrating Black-headed Grosbeak

Year-round Canyon Towhee

Year-round Cactus Wren